Cluster of drug overdose deaths keeps police on edge in Australian city

Police have issued a major warning about the spread of potentially deadly illegal drugs in Canberra after four people died from overdoses in the past two months.

Australian Capital Territory police suspect high drug purity, or the addition of dangerous synthetic opioids such as fentanyl or nitasenes, are responsible for the deaths in the nation’s capital.

The most recent cases in the cluster include a man and a woman who died in separate incidents on Thursday, in addition to two others in the past two months.

Police have yet to determine the exact cause of the overdoses.

According to Australian Capital Territory (ACT) Police Acting Chief Inspector Dave Craft, synthetic opioids were detected in the Australian Capital Territory as recently as May this year.

“While police focus on tackling drug suppliers who deliberately cause harm and misery to our community, we want to raise awareness of this problem,” he said.

‘(We) encourage users of illicit drugs to minimise their harm and protect themselves from the harmful substances currently in circulation.

‘There is no such thing as safe drug use, but we understand that drug addiction is a health problem.

The latest deaths include a man and a woman who died in separate incidents on Thursday, along with two others in the past two months

‘Given the recent overdoses that have been attended by police, we urge drug users to do so as safely as possible.’

Chief Inspector Craft said officers had been called to incidents where people had died overnight, lost consciousness in the middle of the night and were not discovered until the following morning.

He said he did not want to see any more preventable deaths in the community.

Australian Capital Territory (ACT) police have announced that drug testing is available through CanTEST, a free and confidential chemical analysis of pills and drugs intended for personal use.

Earlier this year, a 60 Minutes program highlighted the danger behind nitasenes and how they end up in the hands of vulnerable people.

Nitazenes are a very potent synthetic opioid that was developed in the 1950s. However, due to their potency, they never made it to pharmacy shelves.

In the programme, experts revealed that all types of substances, from MDMA to cocaine, counterfeit painkillers and even vapes, could be laced with the deadly substance.

In Australia, twenty deaths have been reported from nitazene, in addition to dozens of overdoses.

Police have issued a major warning about the circulation of potentially deadly illegal drugs in Canberra after four overdose deaths in the past two months

Health authorities have issued multiple warnings about the dangerous drug. In November, for example, NSW Health reported a death linked to nitasenes in black market e-liquid, which is used to refill vape pens.

In May, NSW Health issued a warning after four people in Sydney overdosed on nitazenes and were hospitalised.

A month earlier, 20 people had overdosed in the Nepean Blue Mountains area, where nitazenes were found in people who thought they were using heroin.